Nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors continue to be an important component of therapy against human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). These compounds are phosphorylated by cellular enzymes and are incorporated into DNA by HIV-1 RT leading to chain termination during viral DNA synthesis. The ability of mutants of HIV-1 RT to remove chain-terminating nucleotides from nascent DNA chains (excision activity) is an important mechanism of drug resistance, and mutants with elevated excision activity are often selected during therapy. We propose to develop an analytical approach to determine what influences excision activity in infected cells that will help us understand what drives mutant selection in vivo. Aim 1 is to use purified wild type and mutant HIV-1 recombinant proteins to evaluate the roles of RNA cleavage by the ribonuclease H activity of RT and template fragment dissociation in regulating excision rescue of blocked DNA chains. Aim 2 is to determine the effect of HIV nucleocapsid proteins on the release of secondary ribonuclease H cleavage fragments and excision of chain terminators. Aim 3 is to develop methods to measure intracellular excision activity and to use lentivirus vectors packaged with wild type or mutant RTs to evaluate factors that regulate excision in infected cells. The use of the excision reaction of HIV RT as a therapeutic target is limited by our lack of understanding of the intracellular reaction, including factors that influence timing and rate of the reaction, stability of the enzyme-substrate complexes that carry out secondary ribonuclease H cleavage and chain terminator excision, contribution of viral and cellular factors to these reactions, and accessibility of the viral replication machinery to acceptor substrates and inhibitory molecules. These questions will be addressed by the proposed studies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Developoment of new therapies against HIV will continue to be necessary because of the rapid mutation rate of this virus that facilitates selection of drug resistance and because of the need to continue therapy in each patient over many years. Research is proposed to characterize intracellular processes that influence the ability of HIV to escape from a class of drugs that blocks viral DNA synthesis, which will provide insight into the potency of these drugs in different tissues and metabolic conditions, the tissue sites where selection of resistance mutants takes place, and how therapeutic strategies can be changed to optimize drug efficacy and avoid selection of resistant mutants.